The Mouse That RoarsA number of campaigns this week show how web campaigning is reaching a level of sophistication that is transforming it from a gee-whiz fad to a potent industrial tool.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: Machine ManIt’s regarded as the most powerful job in the Party, but new NSW ALP general secretary Mark Arbib wants to build a bridge with the union movement.

Unions: Testing TimesUnions are not opposed to drug and alcohol testing, but they do want to see real safety issues addressed, writes Phil Doyle.

Bad Boss: Freespirit Haunts InternetFreeSpirit forked out a motza for a whiz bang internet presence then disappeared right off the radar – once it was nominated as our Bad Boss for May.

Unions: Badge of HonourSurry Hills is home to one of the world’s finest displays of union badges thanks to Bill "The Bear" Pirie and a supporting cast headed by Joe Strummer, Mark Knopfler, George Benson, Annie Lennox and other seriously big noises.

National Focus: Noel's WorldShrill bosses bleat over minimum wage rise, union spinmeisters congregate in Melbourne and Tassie’s nurses take the baton from their mob in Victoria reports Noel Hester in this national round up.

Economics: Safe RefugeA humanitarian approach to refugees and an economically rational one?? I’d like to see that. Frank Stilwell did, when he went to Young in NSW to look into the impact of the Afghan refugees on temporary protection visas who came to work for the local abattoir

International: Global AbuseAmnesty International have joined the chorus against the violation of trade union rights in the former Soviet republic of Belarus.

History: The HoneypotTo the Honeypot come those individuals anxious to get their hands on instant wealth. So it was in the early days of Broken Hill, wrties Grace Hawes in this homage to the mining town.

Review: Death And The Barbarians This new take on coming of age films focuses on the coming of death and the dignity and maturity it can inspire among those touched by it - though not always easily in the overcrowded Canadian public health system, writes Tara de Boehmler.

Private Nurses Short Changed

Nurses at Brisbane’s upmarket Mater Private Hospital are being dudded up to $2000 a year in comparison to colleagues across the road in the public system.

The Nurses have stopped work three times over the last six weeks after it was revealed that their pay rates are more than four per cent behind other Mater nurses.

Nurses at last week's stop work meeting voted to continue work bans that are set to impact on the hospital's revenue raising capacity.

Bans will remain in place until hospital management resumes negotiations with Queensland Nurses Union (QNU) officials and offers an improved wage rise. The Mater's current offer would see the gap between private and public nurses blow out to over 4.5% or nearly $43.00 per week by January next year.

"The principle of equal pay for equal work in an important part of the Australian industrial relations system," says QNU secretary, Gay Hawksworth. "This offer is an injustice and goes nowhere near addressing the significant wage gap between the vast majority of Mater Private nurses and their colleagues at public hospitals and other Mater hospitals.

"Heavily subsidised by the Federal Government"

"It really is about time Mater management got serious about this issue. I can assure them that QNU members are serious and they inform us they are prepared to stick it out until they get wage justice," says Hawksworth. "I have also received reports that nurses are leaving the Mater Private for public sector jobs. I am informed that in one ward alone up to eight nurses resigned in the two or three weeks before Easter."

"The private hospital sector, which is heavily subsidised by the Federal Government, has an obligation to treat its nurses fairly. It is nurses who keep private hospitals like this running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They should not be treated as second-class citizens in terms of pay.

"After all they have the same qualifications and do the same work as public sector nurses. At the Mater South Brisbane the two sets of nurses are only separated by a road, yet a nurse who takes a job on the private side of the road currently also takes a significant pay cut. That's a ridiculous and untenable situation."

"It is time Mater officials returned to the negotiating table and improved their wage rise offer," says Hawksworth.